Sunday, September 05, 2010
Ping Users Top One Million in First 48 Hours

Apple today announced that in less than 48 hours since its launch on Wednesday, more than one million users have joined Ping, the company's new social network for music.

"One-third of the people who have downloaded iTunes 10 have joined Ping," said Eddy Cue, Apple?s vice president of Internet Services. "As many more people download iTunes 10 in the coming weeks, we expect the Ping community to continue growing."

Ping lets users follow their favorite artists such as Lady Gaga, Coldplay, U2, Jack Johnson, Yo-Yo Ma and more, to see what they?re up to, check out photos and videos they?ve posted, see their tour dates and read comments about other artists and albums they?re listening to. In addition, users can post their thoughts and opinions, their favorite albums and songs, the music they have downloaded from iTunes and the concerts they plan to attend.

Despite its success, Ping has been also hit by spammers.
IT security and data protection firm Sophos is calling upon users of the new Ping musical social network to be on their guard against scammers and spammers who have deluged the system with fraudulent messages.

Sophos researchers have found that Ping is being over-run by scams and spam messages, some of which try and direct users into believing they will receive a free iPhone if they complete online surveys.

"We're used to survey scams like this being spread far and wide via sites like Facebook, but clearly the lack of filtering on Ping is making it a brand new playground for the bad guys to operate in," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "It's ironic that the most common scams on Ping right now revolve around Apple's own iPhone. It's safe to assume that Ping does incorporate some rudimentary filtering to prevent offensive messages from being posted, so hopefully Apple's security team can extend this to also block scam messages and malicious links. In the meantime, though, Ping users should be wary of believing what they read on the new service."